


Sybaris

by rowanthestrange_yugihell



Series: Fem!AU: Drakaina [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Dark Side of Dimensions Spoiler, F/F, Female Atem, Female Kaiba, Female Yugi, Prideshipping, Puzzleshipping, Trans Female Character, fem!AU, flareshipping, rivalshipping - Freeform, vaguely implied: - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 22:06:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10201745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowanthestrange_yugihell/pseuds/rowanthestrange_yugihell
Summary: Fem!AU with Yugi, Atem and Kaiba. Perhaps unsurprisingly, not a lot is different. Except for Seto’s Stilettos.





	

  


* * *

  


Yugi gets called cutie and sweetie everywhere she goes because of her height. Her voice gets even more high and squeaky when she angrily protests, which just makes everything worse. Puberty hasn’t been kind to her, but she’s almost glad she doesn’t have to worry about having to deal with breasts on top of everything else. At least it means the boys aren’t as much of a problem. The girls on the other hand are complete hell.

They call nasty things at her, make up stupid rumours, steal and hide her things. Once Téa even hides her clothes when she’s getting changed from Gym and she’s stuck naked in the changing rooms until she sees one of the less jerky boys (well no, he’s very much a jerk, but at least he doesn’t pick on her) through a crack in the door and begs him to see if he can find her bag. He and his friend are back in five minutes - it was shoved on top of some lockers, so she wouldn’t have been able to get it anyway. The blond boy blushes as he averts his eyes and shoves it through the door.

“Dat everything?”

It is, and she stammers her thanks to them. The guy next to him tells her to ‘forget it’ and they walk off without a backward glance. They don’t get involved in Girl Drama™. She wishes she had that choice.

  


* * *

  


Then a whole lot of stuff all happens at once and her world spins upside down. 

Any other time, her having friends - having Téa of all people as a friend - would be noteworthy. But instead things keep rocketing from one extreme to another until suddenly she’s on a boat to rescue her Grandpa’s soul via a card game, and there’s someone in her head that is definitely not her.

  


* * *

  


The Spirit doesn’t have a name exactly. She rarely even speaks, except when she takes over their body. Instead she’s a constant presence that sits in the Puzzle, which now feels more alive than it ever did when she was piecing it together.

She sees her in her dreams or imaginings sometimes. Very much like her, but at the same time not similar at all. The Spirit is powerful, confident, graceful, lithe and strong in a way that she most certainly isn’t. Almost aggressive and revels in the thrill of the game. 

There’s a look in her near-ruby eyes sometimes. Like a lioness. I could pounce and pin you. I could walk over you and you wouldn’t dare make a sound. I could tear at your throat and you would thank me.

Never directed towards her though. 

Sometimes she wishes it was.

  


* * *

  


Kaiba is back, and they’re duelling her.

The real one this time.

There is something in her eyes that makes her looks both wild and dead on her feet. Not that she looked exactly sane the last time they met either. Kaiba’s not pitiable - good god she wouldn’t dare - but she looks like she’s been pushed to her limit.

It feels almost absurd to see her this way. She’s made her mark on the world by being completely unflappable, cold blue eyes built to stare down the people in her way, or to see through them as if they didn’t even exist. Anyone who could go through what she has- what she does, and still be standing at the top of one of the world’s biggest companies is not someone to mess with. She kept both her names because she said they were hers; took over the companies owned by every man that dare say she was ‘like this’ because of her father and predecessor; and dared to go around wearing whatever she pleased, tall, broad-shouldered and incredibly stylish, while every tabloid made cheap jokes about what was underneath.

Seto Kaiba is terrifying. She’s brutal. But she isn’t like this.

Yugi can hear Joey yelling angrily at Kaiba to stop. He doesn’t understand. The Spirit doesn’t understand either, running her mouth - their mouth. She isn’t seeing what she sees. There’s a piece missing. The Spirit understands games, but Kaiba’s not playing one.

Celtic Guardian, Blue Eyes, Stilettos on a crumbling rock wall. Her mind being torn in different directions. She’s never felt so separate from The Spirit when duelling before. Suddenly she’s being overruled, a decision made without her. The Spirit calls the attack, Téa’s screaming something at her, and she’s wrenching and kicking back control from The Spirit as if she’s never seen her before.

“STOP!”

  


* * *

  


The world rights itself, and wrongs itself and rights itself again. With a little help from them.

The Spirit is a Pharaoh, which makes a lot of sense. In a fit of stupidity, she tells the Pharaoh she always thought she was a goddess, and the Pharaoh laughs, lying in her ghostly form beside her on the bed.

The moonlight doesn’t touch her. Nothing can. And the Pharaoh can’t touch back. Doesn’t stop her from trying though. 

The Pharaoh reaches for her hand, and she turns to face her. There’s a soft look in her eyes which tugs at something inside her. This is when there should be kissing. But they can’t.

  


* * *

  


Then finally they could kiss. But they don’t. Everything happens too fast. She wants more time, but Atem’s been waiting over 3000 years for this so it’s not fair to waste any more of it.

They duel.

She wins.

And she loses.

  


* * *

  


Kaiba is staring at the monster that has killed her instead of looking her in the eye. 

“For her.” Yugi can’t help the tiny noise that escapes her at that.

“The Pharaoh.” How did she not _understand_ until now.

“Take this.” Kaiba says roughly, thrusting the Puzzle at her without looking. She blinks and directs her gaze to it, the eye looking up at her. She takes it. It feels familiar in her hands, but empty. 

As soon as she’s got a good grip on it, Kaiba drops to her knees. Gracefully, despite whatever pain she’s in, not twisting her heels. She’s seen her sprint and fight and jump from metres in the air and not break them - as if she’d let imminent death do that.

“Bring her back Yugi.” She commands. In the last few seconds she meets her eyes, so full of determination. And knows she’s seeing her frightened, faithless ones. Seto Kaiba thinks nothing of telling her to do the impossible - even if she will never witness it.

  


* * *

  


She does the impossible.

Seto Kaiba doesn’t witness it.

  


* * *

  


Articles run all the time about them in the Duelling magazines. Even about Joey now. She tends to skip them. Mostly she just gets them for the tournament news that hasn’t filtered down to her on the internet. And for the Magician Girl posters. 

She puts Kiwi up on the wall besides Lemon. Some writer in the column on the back is saying they’re sisters. She really hopes not or she’s burning in hell for that fanart. Or her heart’s going to be eaten by a crocodile demon. It’s unclear.

She flops onto the bed with the magazine and lets it fall open in the middle where the double page is now missing. An article about Kaiba. She almost automatically flips over - while Duelist isn’t bad, she’s had enough exposure to trashy tabloid ‘exposés’ on Kaiba that it’s something of a reflex - but she finds herself pausing.

“Where In The World Is Seto Kaiba?” Reads the headline, and a picture of her at her most stylish with the new Duel Disk is alongside. It’s about a stupid little conspiracy theory that’s been gaining traction for the last few months. There’s this weird idea that Kaiba’s vanished. As if nobody would’ve noticed one of the richest, most influential women on Earth disappearing, besides a bunch of tin-foil hat wearing nerds.

Ok, she hasn’t spoken to Kaiba in that time, but that’s not really how they work. It’s either world-saving dragging them together, or Kaiba occasionally making up one of her paper thin excuses as to why she needs _her_ in particular to test out a new game. 

Besides, Mokuba would’ve told her if there was anything wrong. Wouldn’t he?

She can understand if she needs some time to be alone after… Everything. She hardly bounced back herself, and she had been certain in her heart that Atem was gone forever. That she would never see her again. 

It still pulls at her sometimes. She thought if she could tell Atem what she meant to her one last time, it would help. But it just makes her find more things she wants to say. She can understand why Kaiba did what she did, and sometimes wonders just how far she herself would go for a chance to be with Atem again. I don’t _need_ you, but I _want_ you.

She rubs her eyes, chucks the magazine on the floor and flicks off the light.

She can’t imagine having to heal a broken heart, _and_ run a company like KaibaCorp. If Seto Kaiba wants to be alone, she should get to be alone.

  


* * *

  


At 5:46am the doorbell goes.

Yugi scrambles to her feet, yelling to her Grandpa that she’ll get it - he always struggles with his back in the morning. She pulls off pyjamas and yanks on clothes blindly, nearly throttling herself when she mistakes her underpants for her bra. She daren’t even look at her hair as she passes the mirror, stumbling down the stairs in the weak light.

  


* * *

  


It’s Kaiba.

The sun rising behind her.

Behind _them_.

She isn’t alone.

  



End file.
